Straight Pepper Diet: A Memoir

Joseph W. Naus was living the American dream. He'd survived a brutal childhood, graduated from Pepperdine Law School, and become a successful attorney. Then one night his American dream life became a nightmare when his sex and alcohol addictions collided and exploded. "On Tuesday I was a respected civil trial lawyer making six-figures. On Wednesday I woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed, charged with attempted murder...and then it got worse."

Free Refills: A Doctor Confronts His Addiction

Dr. Peter Grinspoon seemed to be a total success: a Harvard-educated MD with a thriving practice; married with two great kids and a gorgeous wife; a pillar of his community. But lurking beneath the thin veneer of having it all was an addict fueled on a daily boatload of prescription meds. When the police finally came calling - after a tip from a sharp-eyed pharmacist - Grinspoon's house of cards came tumbling down fast.

While the City Slept: A Love Lost to Violence and a Young Man's Descent into Madness

On a summer night in 2009, three lives intersected in one American neighborhood. Two people newly in love - Teresa Butz and Jennifer Hopper, who spent many years trying to find themselves and who eventually found each other - and a young man on a dangerous psychological descent: Isaiah Kalebu, age 23, the son of a distant, authoritarian father and a mother with a family history of mental illness. All three paths forever altered by a violent crime, all three stories a wake-up call to the system that failed to see the signs.

Broken Glass: A Family's Journey Through Mental Illness

When Robert Hine's daughter, Elene, first showed signs of unhappiness as a little girl, no one dreamed she would grow up to have a serious personality disorder. As an early baby boomer, Elene reached adolescence and young womanhood in the midst of the counterculture years. Her father, a respected professor of American history at the University of California, shares the story of his family's struggle to keep Elene on track and functional, to see her through her troubles with delusions and medication, and eventually to help her raise her own children.

Sober Stick Figure: A Memoir

Sober Stick Figure is a memoir from stand-up comedian Amber Tozer, chronicling her life as an alcoholic - starting with her first drink at the age of seven - and her eventual recovery. Amber writes about the crazy and harsh truths of being raised by alcoholics, becoming one herself, stagnating in denial for years, and finally getting sober.

A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill 12 students and a teacher and wound 24 others before taking their own lives. For the last 16 years, Sue Klebold, Dylan's mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong?

A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction

Patrick J. Kennedy, the former congressman and youngest child of Senator Ted Kennedy, details his personal and political battles with mental illness and addiction, exploring mental health care's history in the country alongside his and every family's private struggles.

Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

For Sarah Hepola, alcohol was "the gasoline of all adventure." She spent her evenings at cocktail parties and dark bars where she proudly stayed till last call. Drinking felt like freedom, part of her birthright as a strong, enlightened 21st-century woman. But there was a price. She often blacked out, waking up with a blank space where four hours should be. Mornings became detective work on her own life. A memoir of unblinking honesty and poignant, laugh-out-loud humor, Blackout is the story of a woman stumbling into a new kind of adventure - the sober life she never wanted.

Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl

Stacy Pershall grew up as an overly intelligent, depressed, deeply strange girl in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, population 1,000. From her days as a 13-year-old Jesus freak through her eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, this spirited memoir chronicles Pershall's journey through hell and her struggle with the mental health care system.

The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir

Ruth Wariner was the 39th of her father's 42 children. Growing up on a farm in rural Mexico, where authorities turned a blind eye to the practices of her community, Ruth lives in a ramshackle house without indoor plumbing or electricity. At church, preachers teach that God will punish the wicked by destroying the world and that women can ascend to heaven only by entering into polygamous marriages and giving birth to as many children as possible.

Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

In November 2001, the body of a young doctor named Andrew Bagby was discovered in Keystone State Park outside Latrobe, Pennsylvania, five bullet wounds in his face, chest, buttocks, and the back of the head. For parents Dave and Kate, the pain was unbearable? But Andrew's murder was only the first in a string of tragic events.

Look at You Now: My Journey from Shame to Strength

In 1979 Liz Pryor is a 17-year-old girl from a good family in the wealthy Chicago suburbs. Halfway through her senior year of high school, she discovers that she is pregnant - a fact her parents are determined to keep a secret from her friends, siblings, and community forever. One snowy January day, after driving across three states, her mother drops her off at what Liz thinks is a Catholic home for unwed mothers - but which is, in truth, a locked government-run facility for delinquent and impoverished pregnant teenage girls.

When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery

With poignant insight and humor, Frank Vertosick, Jr., MD, describes some of the greatest challenges of his career, including a six-week-old infant with a tumor in her brain, a young man struck down in his prime by paraplegia, and a minister with a .22-caliber bullet lodged in his skull. Told through intimate portraits of Vertosick's patients and unsparing-yet-fascinatingly detailed descriptions of surgical procedures, When the Air Hits Your Brain illuminates both the mysteries of the mind and the realities of the operating room.

The Bitter Taste of Dying: A Memoir

In his first book, author Jason Smith explores the depravity and desperation required to maintain an opiate addiction so fierce, he finds himself jumping continents to avoid jail time and learns the hard way that some demons cannot be outrun. While teaching in Europe, he meets a prostitute who secures drugs for him at the dangerous price of helping out the Russian Mafia; in China he gets his Percocet and Xanax fixes but terrifies a crowd of children and parents at his job in the process.

Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction

From the moment she uttered the brave and honest words, "I am an alcoholic," to interviewer George Stephanopoulos, Elizabeth Vargas began writing her story, as her experiences were still raw. Now, in Between Breaths, Vargas discusses her accounts of growing up with anxiety - which began suddenly at the age of six when her father served in Vietnam - and how she dealt with this anxiety as she came of age, to her eventually turning to alcohol for relief.

Accused: My Fight for Truth, Justice and the Strength to Forgive

Tonya Craft, a Georgia kindergarten teacher and loving mother of two, never expected a knock on her door to change her life forever. But in May 2008, false accusations of child molestation turned her world upside down. The trial that followed dragged her reputation through the mud and lent nationwide notoriety to her name. Tonya's life spiraled into a witch-trial nightmare in which she was deemed guilty before her innocence could be determined by a jury.

I Swear I'll Make It Up to You: A Life on the Low Road

A misfit kid at the best of times, Mishka Shubaly had his world shattered when, in a 24-hour span in 1992, he survived a mass shooting on his school's campus then learned that his parents were getting divorced. His father, a prominent rocket scientist, abandoned the family, and their home was lost to foreclosure. Shubaly swore to avenge the wrongs against his mother but instead plunged into a magnificently toxic love affair with alcohol.

Cook County ICU: 30 Years of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases

Author Cory Franklin, MD, who headed the hospital's intensive care unit from the 1970s through the 1990s, shares his most unique and bizarre experiences, including the deadly Chicago heatwave of 1995, treating the first AIDS patients in the country before the disease was diagnosed, the nurse with rare Munchausen syndrome, the only surviving ricin victim, and the professor with Alzheimer's hiding the effects of the wrong medication.

The Gilded Razor: A Memoir

The Gilded Razor is the true story of a double life. By the age of seventeen, Sam Lansky was an all-star student with Ivy League aspirations in his final year at an elite New York City prep school. But a nasty addiction to prescription pills spiraled rapidly out of control, compounded by a string of reckless affairs with older men, leaving his bright future in jeopardy. After a terrifying overdose, he tried to straighten out.

Chancers: Addiction, Prison, Recovery, Love: One Couple's Memoir

When Susan Stellin asked Graham MacIndoe to shoot her author photo for an upcoming travel book, she barely knew him except for a few weekends with mutual friends at a summer house in Montauk. He was a gregarious, divorced Scotsman who had recently gotten sober; she was an independent New Yorker who decided to take a chance on a rough-around-the-edges guy. But their relationship was soon tested when Susan discovered that Graham still had a drug habit he was hiding.

Fast Girl: A Life Spent Running from Madness

The former middle-distance Olympic runner and high-end escort speaks out for the first time about her battle with mental illness and how mania controlled and compelled her in competition but also in life. This is a heartbreakingly honest yet hopeful memoir reminiscent of Manic, Electroboy, and An Unquiet Mind.

How to Get Run Over by a Truck: A Memoir

People often say, "I feel like I've been run over by a truck." Katie actually was. On a sunny morning bike ride in Brooklyn, 24-year-old Katie McKenna was forever changed when she was run over by an 18-wheeler. Being crushed under a massive semi wasn't something Katie should have survived. After 10 hours of emergency surgery, she woke to find herself in a body and a life that would never be the same.

Rough Trade: A Shocking True Story of Prostitution, Murder, and Redemption

Early one morning in May, 1997, a young couple in the mountains of Colorado spotted a man dragging a body up a secluded trail. The man fled, leaving behind a bloody, dying woman. The investigation into the death of young street-walker Anita Paley would lead from that idyllic spot to the seamy underbelly of Denver and a world of prostitution, drug dealers, and violent criminals. And it would expose the lives of suspect Robert Riggan and Anita's friend Joanne Cordova, a former cop-turned-crack-addict and hooker.

The Stranger She Loved: A Mormon Doctor, His Beautiful Wife, and an Almost Perfect Murder

In 2007, Dr. Martin MacNeill - a doctor, lawyer, and Mormon bishop - discovered his wife of 30 years dead in the bathtub of their Pleasant Grove, Utah, home, her face bearing the scars of a facelift he had persuaded her to undergo just a week prior. At first the death of 50-year-old Michele MacNeill, a former beauty queen and mother of eight, appeared natural. But days after the funeral, when Dr. MacNeill moved his much younger mistress into the family home, his children grew suspicious.

Publisher's Summary

Even as a reporter, Sheila Hamilton missed the signs as her husband David's mental illness unfolded before her. By the time she had pieced together the puzzle, it was too late. Her once brilliant, intense, and hilarious partner was dead within six weeks of a formal diagnosis of bipolar disorder, leaving his nine-year-old daughter and wife without so much as a note to explain his actions, a plan to help them recover from their profound grief, or a solution for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt that they would inherit from him.

All the Things We Never Knew takes listeners from David and Sheila's romance through the last three months of their life together and into the year after his death. It details their unsettling descent from ordinary life into the world of mental illness and examines the fragile line between reality and madness. Now, a decade after David's death, Sheila and her daughter, Sophie, have learned the power of choosing life over retreat, let themselves love and trust again, and understand the importance of forgiveness. Their story will resonate with all those who have loved someone suffering from bipolar disease and mental illness.

Where does All the Things We Never Knew rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

The best so far on this topic. Sheila is a master storyteller and brings the facts to life like you are living it yourself. Her story brought so much empathy her way in what she experienced in her life and how there is hope for those of us struggling living with someone who has bi polar disorder.

Which scene was your favorite?

It was one of many touching quotes but it went something like this (remembering from audio) "Men are defined by the secrets they keep" Favorite scenes were many, her falling in love with David, her heartache losing him and not knowing what to do to help him and trying to protect her sweet daughter Sophie. Her descriptions of everything in the book shows of her writing talent. I could see all of her images vividly.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Use the same title.

Any additional comments?

I loved the research she did and the information that she added. I found myself writing these books down to do more research. I felt such a connection to this story from my own personal experience and yet even though I cried in many moments of this book, Life goes on, cherish the past--Look to the living., love them and hold on!

I would like to also add that our society can change if we bring suicide out and take the shame from it. Take QPR and active look for the signs in friends and family

Beautifully written-This book is the real deal. A deep emotional depiction of how to cope with mental illness when it shows itself in a loved one. The thing that made this book resonate for me was the authors ability to express her feelings about everyone involved. This is an informative book for sure, but for me it is the ultimate love story. Love from every angle. I adored this read.

Where does All the Things We Never Knew rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This is definitely in my top 10 favorite audiobooks i've ever listened to! The story is amazing and intense. Written and read so well!

What other book might you compare All the Things We Never Knew to and why?

There is no book that i can compare this one to.

Which character – as performed by Sheila Hamilton – was your favorite?

Sheila was my favorite character. The way she handled the tough situations. They way she spoke of her daughter, she's an amazing woman.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Chasing the chaos of mental illness

Any additional comments?

The book was a real eye opener. I really love learning about mental illness and the human brain. Her story was so real and touching. I cried during a few parts, her words easily create amazing imagery in my head. The book was an experience <3

I think everyone knows someone with some sort of mental illness, so everyone should listen to this book! Sheila was brave to publicly tell such a personal story. I laughed, cried, and cringed listening to this book. It was worth every second I spent listening.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes, I wanted to know what was going to happen. At the same time I didn't want to hear what we inevitably knew was going to happen. I could hardly stand to listen to her describe her daughters heartache. It was heart wrenching.

I loved every chapter of this true life story. The author/narrator is equally good at writing and reading a compelling and sometimes very emotional account of her life with a husband that has bipolar disorder. I especially liked the short chapters that explore the definitions of various types of mental illness and treatments. A very important and pertinent read for everyone in our society.